EDGE OF AN INDUSTRIAL PARK

NEAR A BRIDGE

EAGLE ROCK

LA


'…I read about them online last month…'

Bozer gestured to their surroundings as Riley spoke.

'Exactly! So you'll know about their whole super-secretive-thing-that-is-surprisingly-really-good-for-business-'cause-of-the-hype!'

Riley looked around sceptically.

'Yeah, but I really don't think we're going to find a food truck selling the best Philly cheesesteaks outside of Philly in this particular industrial estate, Bozer.' She gestured to their surrounds as they made their way towards the bridge. 'Why would they pick this one over any other of the hundreds of other industrial estates in LA?'

Bozer put a hand on his chest, over his heart, affecting a wounded expression.

'Riley, come on! As if I'd drag you here without some good inside knowledge!' He smirked and looked rather smug. 'I've got a contact.'

He said that as if he were some kind of super-spy and the contact would help them take down Kim Jong-Un or something like that.

Riley shook her head, still a little sceptical, but also with fond exasperation, as she followed Bozer through the estate.


(They ate Philly cheesesteaks together under the bridge)

(It was amazing. Better than any she'd had in Philadelphia back in her East Coast days.)

(It turned out Bozer's 'contact' was one of the guys who ran the food truck, an old friend of his from his burger-flipping days during college.)

(She still let him take credit for it.)

(He was so happy and proud of himself that she couldn't really do anything else.)

(Besides, it was a really good cheesesteak.)


MACGYVER'S RESIDENCE

PASADENA


'…He accidentally dyed the ceiling of a disused lecture theatre blue.' Beth paused with a few giggles. 'It was really, really persistent; this was when I was seven, and when I was an undergrad at Purdue, the stain was still there…'

Mac shook his head with a wry, teasing smile and a chuckle, as Beth finished relating the story of how one of her mom's students (her mother was a chemistry professor at Purdue) had done an out-of-hours, not-faculty-approved experiment that had gone a little wrong. He spoke, his tone teasing.

'Does that mean you broke into a lecture theatre you weren't supposed to be in?'

She affected a very prim tone.

'Of course not! It wasn't locked and it was part of campus, I simply…took a detour through it one day, because I was curious about a campus legend.'

He gave a snort of laughter, shaking his head fondly.

To be fair, Beth was a perfect goody-two-shoes in college compared to me, as far as I know.

And by some standards, I was pretty tame in college, so…

'Trying to make a long-lasting blue hair dye for your roommate's girlfriend because of a bet sounds like the kind of thing born at 3 am after far too many energy drinks.'

When she replied, he had the distinct feeling that Beth would be narrowing her eyes at him and jabbing the air in front of his chest (mostly teasingly) if she were there in person.

'You sound like you're speaking from experience, Mac…'

He chuckled, and nodded, losing himself in his memories for a moment before speaking.

'Well, there was the time when my friends and I competed to see who could balance the most pineapples on their head…'

'Who won?'

He gave a little smirk.

'I did, I managed three.'

Her voice was equally impressed and curious when she responded.

'How?'

He smiled, soft and broad.

'I found that the main problem was keeping them together; the shifting of all three pineapples makes their centre of gravity constantly move, which makes it hard to balance them on your head. So, I stuck them together using the leaves…'


JAZZ CLUB

LA


Jack smiled at his girlfriend across the table, as she smiled and bobbed her head along to the sinuous jazz that filled the room, eyes closed. After a few beats, she opened her eyes and reached out to take his hand, smile widening as she scooted closer to him along the semi-circular bench of their booth at the club.

Diane leaned her head against his shoulder, enjoying the music, which Jack agreed was very good (even if it wasn't Metallica, he did appreciate good jazz, something that he had an old friend from high school to thank).

They sat there for a while, simply enjoying the music and each other's company, before Jack downed the rest of his whiskey and got up, holding a hand out to Diane.

'Wanna dance?'

The club had a small dancefloor, and Jack gestured towards it with his head.

Diane looked at him with piercing, knowing eyes, then her smile widened and she took his hand and stood elegantly.


'You've been practicing, haven't you?'

Diane's question sounded half like a statement, like she already knew the answer.

(Jack had many talents, but dancing was not one of them, but he was far better at it than she remembered, even if it'd been more than ten years ago.)

Jack gave a somewhat sheepish grin as they danced.

'YouTube's a wonderful invention.' The grin simultaneously softened and became a bit more like a smirk. 'And anything for my best girl.'


DALTON AUTO REPAIR

PASADENA


'…I'm guessing you can't just tell your client that he bought a lemon and that it'd be better in the long run to scrap this and buy a better car?'

Mac, his voice a little muffled by the fact that he was underneath said lemon, spoke, sounding rather frustrated and exasperated.

(Jack had come to the same conclusion about the car, but had asked Mac to take a look to see if he could offer some suggestions on how to de-lemon-ify the car.)

The older man looked up from where he was buffing the hood of the 1976 Mustang fastback that he'd restored for a client (said client had sent it in for a service a couple of days ago and would be picking it up this afternoon).

'Not an option, man.' Jack shook his head. 'Guy's really attached to that particular make and model.'

Mac sighed and rolled out from under the car for a moment, grabbing a rag to towel off the worst of the grease from his hands.

'Which would probably explain why he bought a lemon.' He sighed again and his thinking face appeared, then his I-have-an-idea face, and he rolled back under the car. Jack smiled. 'I think we can fix this…' There were clanking sounds for a while, before Mac, a streak of grease on his chin, rolled out from under the car again. 'Yeah, we can fix this, but it's going to cost him.'

Jack grinned, and reached out to help Mac up, tossing away his buffing cloth and patting him on the back.

'Knew you'd come through, brother.' Jack waved a hand as if to say it doesn't matter. 'And the guy can pay for it; he's one of those investment banker types.' Jack snorted. 'In fact, he'll be happy to pay for it; that's how much he loves this car, man.' Then, he smirked. 'And talking about shelling out the cash, brother…your phone bill must be going through the roof with how much time you spend talking to your lady doctor!'

Mac just shot Jack a look, part-incredulous, part-long-suffering.

'Jack, that was a terrible segue.' He turned away from Jack and grabbed a selection of the spare parts from Jack's spare parts pile. The selection looked random to Jack, but he knew that Mac had something in mind, even if he couldn't see it yet. 'And I upgraded to an unlimited calls and texts plan; it's better value-for-money than my old plan, so I'm not paying that much more…'

The older man shook his head with a fond, but also slightly long-suffering, smile as he started to recognize what Mac was building.

Kid was crazy.

But he was a good kind of crazy.


RILEY'S FAVOURITE COMPUTER STORE

PASADENA


'…You need to have the proper equipment to do the job. And your laptop's just not going to cut it, Bozer.' Riley walked purposefully through the store's aisles, as Bozer followed her, rather confused. He only recognized a handful of things in the entire store, and that was only because Mac liked to do his thing with them. 'You'll need this…and these…'

She pulled things off the shelves and put them in the basket that Bozer was holding. They'd been playing Resident Evil 7 at her place, and during a break from the game, he'd decided to show her the first cut of his latest movie on his laptop (it was very rough – especially in the special effects department). Riley hadn't been very impressed by his CGI skills (even Bozer admitted that the monster who ate General Wang looked like Mac covered in ping-pong balls and turned green), and had declared that she couldn't stand him mangling it like that, and dragged him to this store so he could buy the parts he needed for a better rig.

(He was really hoping she'd help him build it – or maybe build it for him in exchange for some large quantity of his cooking – because he really didn't think he could do it himself. Besides, he liked spending time with Riley.)

Suddenly, she grabbed him by the arm and tugged him behind a shelving unit.

Bozer turned to her, confused.

'Uh…Riley, why are we hiding like we're hiding from bad guys?'

Riley made a face, then ducked her head out from behind the shelf a tiny bit, pointing at something, then ducked back behind the shelf and crossed her arms. Bozer ducked his head out further to get a good look.

She'd pointed at a guy who looked very much like a bad boy, and not in the way Mac was a 'bad boy' (as in burning-down-the-high-school's-football-stadium-in-a-small-nuclear-meltdown-by-accident-because-he-was-mad-sciencing, frequently wearing a leather jacket and preferring to wear his hair a bit longer than most men), but actual bad boy.

He also looked like he hadn't had a bath or a shower in years.

Bozer gawked at him for a few seconds, before Riley tugged him back behind the shelving unit.

'That's Jaden. I used to date him. Years ago.' Her expression grew more disgusted. 'It was a really bad life choice.'

Bozer instantly disliked this Jaden even more.

He was probably a horrible boyfriend who couldn't even put together a half-decent dinner for his girl.

He had to be.

Bozer just nodded in agreement and reached out and patted Riley's shoulder comfortingly.

'He's kinda lacking in the personal hygiene department, isn't he?'

Riley's face looked as if she'd just found four rotting rats in her pantry.

'Yeah, really lacking…' She chanced another glance around the shelving unit, finding that Jaden was gone, and grabbed Bozer's hand for a moment, tugging him out from their hiding place, then letting go. 'Come on, we need to get you a decent motherboard…'


MACGYVER'S RESIDENCE

PASADENA


Mac carefully screwed the last blade of his latest invention into place, listening to the sounds of cooking emanating from his phone.

He was making an automatic, autonomous lawnmower (best described as a Roomba for lawns), while Beth cooked a casserole, a pot of chilli and a lasagne, all at once.

(Making large quantities of food and freezing them in portions was the best way, given her job, according to her, to minimize the amount of takeout she ate.)

They'd been chatting as each of them worked, but they'd fallen quiet for a moment, which was honestly unusual (they were both pretty talkative), but not uncomfortable in the slightest, he felt.

He pushed the top cover of his Roomba-lawnmower into place, and then reached out to grab a handful of screws to secure it. However, he'd neglected to retract the blades first (he'd wanted to see if they protruded sufficiently past the cover, but not retracting them was a very bad idea in hindsight) and misjudged the distance slightly, the top of his left hand brushing against one of the very, very sharp-edged blades.

He swore rather loudly as pain raced across his hand, blood instantly welling. It really stung.

'Mac…did you cut yourself on your Roomba-lawnmower?'

The sound of Beth chopping vegetables ceased immediately, and he suspected she was probably shooting her phone (him, sort-of) a narrow-eyed look. Despite the pain, Mac gave a little smile as he grabbed some paper towels to wrap around his hand as a temporary measure.

'Not badly?' She made a huffing, exasperated sound that he thought was also quite fond, and he continued, putting his phone in one of his jacket pockets as he walked to the bathroom to grab the first aid kit. 'It's not deep enough to need stitches, I promise, and I'm getting the first aid kit right now to clean and bandage it. I'll tell you if it doesn't stop bleeding in a reasonable amount of time, or shows any redness, swelling, heat or other signs of infection, I promise.'

He thought it best to head her off at the pass.

Mac was quite sure that if she thought he wasn't looking after the injury properly, she'd demand his address and show up at his house.

(Which really wasn't an unpleasant possibility, not at all…except for the fact that his house was a mess, and there was a large grease stain on his shirt, and that he had copious quantities of grease under his nails and he probably smelled like motor oil and rust…Mac cut off that train of thought there, before he decided to do something really stupid like sort-of invite her over to make sure he was taking care of the cut properly.)

(It was just a cut. There was absolutely no need to drag his ER doctor friend – whom he'd technically never met - over to look after it, particularly as he was, apparently, a terrible patient.)

(She did not deserve to have to deal with a terrible patient on her day off, friend or not.)

(The little voice in his head that promised to try very hard to be a good patient for Beth was summarily ignored.)


COWBOYS GAME

LA MEMORIAL COLISEUM

LA


'…I didn't organize this, I swear!'

Jack, a little panicked, looked between his girlfriend and the jumbotron, which showed the two of them.

He really hadn't intended to wind up on Kiss-Cam. He'd really come for the game, and to convert Diane into a true Cowboys fan.

(She quite enjoyed watching football, had before they'd met, but had never really had a team she supported strongly, tending to support the local team wherever she lived – though she'd taken up cheering for the Cowboys when they were together, both times.)

(Jack was determined to show her that the Cowboys were clearly the best team in the NFL and worthy of true loyalty and fan-hood.)

Diane just shook her head at him (fond and exasperated) and leaned over and kissed him.

The crowd cheered, and when they broke apart, Jack whooped and held up his giant Cowboys foam hand.

'Go Cowboys!'

Diane shook her head at him again, with more fond exasperation, but she also stole his Cowboys baseball cap.

(He'd win her over, Jack was sure.)

(She'd let him.)


SHOPPING MALL

HIGHLAND PARK


'What do you think about this for Jack?'

Bozer smirked, pulling out a cream-coloured shirt covered in colourful airplanes, displaying it to Riley, who also smirked, a little wickedly.

(She and Bozer had a little plan in motion to force Jack – who was very unstylish – into a makeover. It involved making him lose a bet. After seeing a few photos of Mac, Riley had also pushed for making him over too – he was even less stylish than Jack, taking age into account - but Bozer had said that A, his roommate was a completely lost cause, and B, he hadn't managed to make Mac lose a bet since his BFF was fourteen and he'd made him ask his crush to Prom.)

She pulled out a pair of fashionably-ripped jeans, a little tighter and lighter in colour than anything Jack would pick out for himself.

'That'd go really well with these.'

Their mischievous smirks both widened.


MACGYVER'S RESIDENCE

PASADENA


Mac lounged on the couch, his feet resting on the coffee table, reading a very interesting paper on a potential alternative to titanium for medical implants from Beth's favourite open-source medical journal on his laptop.

(She'd sent him the recommendation a couple of days ago, and he'd finally gotten time to sit down and read it. It'd been a busy few days at work as they finished building a probe prototype before an immobile deadline; nowhere near Iris-from-The-Martian levels, but busy nonetheless.)

He raised his eyebrows as he reached a point halfway through the Results and Discussion section. No wonder she'd wanted him to read this paper…


'Hey, Mac, you've got to see this!' Bozer held up his phone to his roommate with a smirk, as the two of them sat at the kitchen counter, Bozer working on edits of that movie in which Mac played both General Wang and a green monster on the new rig that Riley had built him (with him as her enthusiastic but not particularly useful assistant), Mac reading the latest issue of New Scientist. Mac leaned over to take a look, as Bozer continued, smirk widening and waggling his eyebrows. 'Jack and Diane got caught on Kiss-Cam!'

They really did…and of course Jack had to yell 'Go Cowboys!' at the end.

Of course he did.

Honestly, before he and Diane got together again, I'd have said that nothing could make Jack happier than the Cowboys winning the Super Bowl.

Now…well, I wouldn't say nothing could, but there still can't be many things that would.

Bozer laughed and shook his head, watching the video for the third time, slapping a hand on his thigh.

'I gotta show this to Riley…'

There was a slightly-goofy grin on his face that Mac had noticed was very strongly associated with mentions of his co-worker and friend.

'Uh, Boze, are you sure that's a good idea?'

I'm speaking relatively hypothetically, and I'll be the first to admit that I'm not the best at this sort of thing, but I really don't think anyone wants to see the closest thing they've ever had to a father kissing their mom…on Kiss-Cam, no less.

Bozer's eyes widened almost comically as he put down his phone.

'Too late…'


'Hey, Mac, Riley's demanding brain bleach. Can you get on to that for me? I'll make my special eight-layered chocolate cake if you can do it…'

Mac shook his head with a smile that was almost a smirk as Bozer looked up rather hopefully from his phone, that goofy, Riley-associated grin on his face again.

I love Bozer's eight-layered chocolate cake.

Everyone who's had the privilege of eating it does.

It's a great incentive…but brain bleach, unfortunately, is beyond me.

Or I'd have made it by now.

Trust me, there's definitely some things I've seen that I'd love to forget, and there's no way that's happening naturally…

He held his hands up apologetically.

'Sorry, Boze. No can do.'

Bozer threw his hands out and up.

'Come on, man!' He pointed at his roommate. 'Didn't you have that professor in college who always said impossible is not a scientific term?'

Professor V did say that.

He also had a whole rant about how it was so often misinterpreted and misused. He was trying to teach us that we needed to keep an open mind and consider all possibilities and to keep trying, not that literally nothing is impossible.

Many things are impossible, like breaking the First Law of Thermodynamics.

But far fewer things are impossible than most people think, which is probably also what Professor V was getting at.

Mac nodded wryly, conceding the point, before shaking his head again, a wry smile on his face. He picked up his own phone and held it up.

'I'll get a second opinion on that, but don't hold your breath, Boze.'

He pulled up a long string of messages (a very, very long string of messages) and added another.

Hey Beth – apparently I need to make brain bleach; any tips on how to start? I'm really, really stumped! :P

(While they'd mostly moved on to calls, he and Beth still texted back and forth too, mostly when there were a couple of days when they couldn't talk properly because of work.)

(Besides, he'd become pretty fond of the medium.)

(Of course, Mac didn't notice the equally-goofy, fond smile, so similar to Bozer's Riley-associated grin, that appeared on his face as he typed that message.)

(But Bozer did.)


AN: Yes, this is really just all fluff. But falling in love takes time, in my opinion, so this was born. Rest assured that Mac skimmed over this while telling his kids the story; they're not dying of boredom!